Antique Furniture And Other Exicting Things (a Good Omens fanfic)
by quailmint
Summary: Shortly after the almost-Armageddon, a particular angel and demon have more time on their hands then they know what to do with. One can't always be saving the world, sometimes other things need be done. Of course, with these two, not a moment can ever possibly be dull.
1. After The Ritz

They walked, although Crowley sauntered more, really, out of the Ritz, feeling more satisfied with themselves then they had in the past six thousand years. It was an odd sense of satisfaction, the kind that pops up after one does something that few others acknowledge or appreciate despite it being, in one's own mind, at least, perhaps one of the greatest things accomplished in history. Because, essentially, that's exactly what they had done. And they loved it, because even though they lost their own sides, they saved _the_ _world_, which they rightfully should be awfully proud about.

They entered the bookshop, and Aziraphale, after pausing for a moment, flipped the Closed sign in the window to Open. He hadn't been open much the past week, having being too busy _saving_ the _world._ He felt a little guilty about it, despite not really wanting to sell the books at all, and determined he would stay open for at least several hours. Crowley took off his sunglasses and tucked them in his pocket, sitting in a chair that he thought looked comfortable, although after attempting to get in a comfortable position he found it most certainly wasn't. He decided the stupid uncomfortable chair was another one of Aziraphale's potential customer deterrents.

Speaking of Aziraphale, he stood over at a nearby shelf, straightening and organizing already meticulously straightened and organized books. He really was trying to figure out what to say to start a conversation because he found it to be rather intimidating when Crowley just stared at him. Unfortunately, everything he could think of the say, which truthfully was nothing, didn't sound right.

"I'm fairly sure the books are perfect, angel."

"Maybe you're right, but I really don't think they are... I mean, they really just do look...off."

"And they probably are. But reality was just entirely rebooted mere hours ago, you can't expect everything to be perfect. I'm sure they are, but no one notices it except you because you spend way too much time in here. You just have to get used to it and stop worrying."

Aziraphale sighed. Get used to it. There were a lot of things he needed to get used to now, the books, both the old ones and the ones that had mysteriously turned up after Armageddon stopped being one of the smallest things. The more major ones were things like not having to periodically report to Head Office and being able to spend time with Crowley without worrying about being caught. He wasn't sure if he could ever get used to not having to constantly check his shoulder when Crowley was with him, not after spending thousands of years doing so.

He turned to face the demon, and opened his mouth when he saw the chair. "Oh...ah, I wouldn't recommend sitting in that..."

Crowley tilted his head. "Just because it's so uncomfortable? Nah, I'm fine. I'll manage."

"No, er...do you, ah, remember that one night?"

"I've lived a lot of nights, you really have to be more specific." Crowley rested his arm on the back of the chair and immediately recoiled. "Ah! What is that? Why is it so sticky?"

Aziraphale nervously bit his lip as Crowley looked to him for answers, disgust written plainly on his face. He was silent for a moment before he remembered. And then he started to laugh.

"Really? Is this the same chair?"

Aziraphale nodded sheepishly.

"You should have gotten rid of it. You should have burnt it, honestly. Aziraphale, why didn't you burn this chair?"

"I'm not sure." He was in fact, very sure. That night was one of his fondest memories with Crowley, and he couldn't bear to get rid of the chair. Plus, it just looked so nice, and it really added something to the small shop that he was unable to explain with words. He had tried endlessly to clean it, to no avail. So he kept the chair in the corner, and no one had ever sat in it, except for the one elderly man who he had miraculously, perhaps with Aziraphale's help, not noticed the state of the chair.

Crowley knew he was lying. You can't be friends with someone for that long and not expect to begin to notice when they're faking something, especially with someone too kind to be a good liar like Aziraphale. Plus, Crowley was a demon, after all, giving him a natural ability to easily lie. And the best liars are always the best liar-sniffers.

But he didn't really care about what Aziraphale's answer was, because he knew that the angel was too sentimental about so many things, which is why he ran a bookshop that didn't really sell books. He removed his jacket and inspected it and the sticky splotches covering the back, and frowned because they would be a pain to clean.

The bell on the door to the shop jingled, and as Aziraphale turned to face the customer Crowley pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on to cover his eyes. He strolled into the back room of the shop, sitting on the small couch in the back room, after inspecting it for anything undesirable to sit in. He pulled out a bottle of wine from a cabinet and poured himself a glass.

He was nearly done with the bottle before Aziraphale entered the room.

"I do wish you had stayed out there," said the angel.

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

"They would have left much sooner if you did your intimidating glare thing. It took forever for them to leave."

"It was barely five minutes."

Aziraphale wrung his hands together. "Still, I really though they were going to ask to purchase something. They were just looking at so many..."

Crowley sighed. "Go fix the books, angel."

Aziraphale sheepishly left the room, a bit confused about how easily Crowley spotted how much the disarray of the books bothered him. He quickly organized them, straightening the ones on the small table and moving around the ones that had been picked up from the shelves. He paused for a moment before returning to the back room, and turned the sign on the door back to Closed. He felt bad because he had been open for a mere half hour, which really not the several hours he had promised himself, but he would open again later, he decided. It was his shop after all, and if he wanted to take a break after being open for only a half hour, he could.

He sat down in the back room in a chair across from Crowley. "You don't think I should sell the books more, do you?"

Crowley hiccuped and set the empty wine bottle down on the table in front of him. "No."

Aziraphale relaxed a bit at this. "Good. Because I really don't think so either."

Truthfully, Crowley didn't care so much about what books were sold and whatever. But he knew how heartbroken his friend was whenever he did sell a book, and he didn't like seeing Aziraphale being all mopey whenever he lost one of his precious paper children. So really, he determined, he did care about Aziraphale's books.

They spent the next several hours drinking and reminiscing on the past six thousand years, the best times and the worst. Crowley ranted about the fourteenth century and Aziraphale nodded and hmm-ed in all the right spots. He had heard this particular one of Crowley's rants countless times before, but he never got bored of hearing it. There was a new air of comfort around them, in the sense that they could just sit and chat like good old friends do without worrying about being severely punished or perhaps killed, a worry which always tends to put a damper on the conversation.

It was after midnight and nearing three when Crowley decided that he should really return to his flat as there were serval houseplants that were due for a scolding, and so he promised a very drunk Aziraphale that he would stop by as soon as possible before speeding off in the Bentley. Aziraphale, after frowning at Crowley's horrifically dangerous driving, opened the shop again. Just in case anyone was wandering the streets and felt like entering.


	2. Cactus

Crowley didn't stop by the shop the next day. Or, for the rest of the day, depending on how technical one wanted to be. Aziraphale left the shop open for most of the day, except for the hour between twelve and one when he took a lunch break. He sat in his office and read the new inventory, and many of the books were quite good. All of them were fantastic really, how could they not be, they were books, after all.

It wasn't until the day after, when he was tidying up the back room that he noticed Crowley had left his jacket on the small couch. He picked it up, delicately pinching it from the small spots that hadn't touched the grimy chair. The jacket was a mess, so he washed it and hung it up to dry. It did dry, miraculously fast.

He tried calling Crowley to tell him the jacket was clean, but didn't get an answer, so he left a voicemail that was never returned.

Aziraphale kept reading all the books, there were so many and he loved them all and he had nothing better to do. Plus, it took his mind off of Crowley, who, he decided, was probably off doing demonley things, and Aziraphale was only somewhat confident in his belief that Crowley would show up eventually. He had the bookstore on strangely normal opening hours for a store such as his own, but barely a half dozen people entered over the next couple days. Crowley was never one of them. By Thursday, he had stopped looking up hopefully, wishing that the demon would enter the shop.

On Thursday, at two-twelve sharp, Crowley awkwardly pushed open the door with his shoulder, carrying a large potted plant in his hands. He scanned the empty shop for the angel, and, not seeing him, sighed and walked over to Aziraphale's office. The angel was absorbed in his book, not noticing the demon with the plant standing in front of him. It wasn't until Crowley bumped the desk that he finally looked up. He blinked for a moment, not entirely sure that he wasn't seeing things.

"Good afternoon to you too," Crowley said.

"Oh! Yes, hello. I thought you forgot about me."

Crowley laughed. "How could I ever do that?" He paused for a moment. "You're joking though, right?"

Aziraphale nodded, but he had been a little concerned that Crowley did in fact forget that he promised to return. His gaze fell to the plant in Crowley's hands. It was an absolute unit of a plant, a spiky cactus towering at least three feet high. "What's that?"

Crowley shifted his position so that he could see around the cactus to where Aziraphale was seated. "I brought a plant."

"Oh."

"It's...for you, I guess. I had a place in mind for it."

Aziraphale, once recovered from the brief shock that resulted from the knowledge that _Crowley_ had brought _him _a _present_. A plant, too. He himself had an idea of where to put it, right next to his office desk where he could easily keep an eye on it and care for it and keep it safe from anyone in his shop that might damage it. But he was curious to what Crowley had in mind. So he asked.

"Where?"

Crowley motioned for him to follow, so he did. He walked out of the office and into the main section of the bookstore.

"I really don't know if it'll be safe out here," Aziraphale said, worriedly.

"Shh." Crowley replied.

He walked over to the grimy old chair, and placed the cactus on it. "There," he wiping his hands on his pants. "Now no one will make the same mistake I did. And if they do still sit, well, they kind of deserve to be covered in the grime as justice for their stupidity. Who's enough of an idiot to sit on a _cactus_, of all things?"

"I suppose you have a point," Aziraphale said, still a bit shocked at the fact that Crowley had not only given him the gift of a plant, but also plotted out a place to put it. "You know, I really have to give you something in return. I don't have much, besides the books, obviously, um." He went into his office and removed a key from his pocket, opening a locked drawer in the desk. He pulled out the drawers only contents, a single book. He held it in his hands for a moment, staring at the cover. He then returned it to the drawer and locked it, because he wasn't ready to give that book to Crowley. He picked up a different one from the desktop and walked back out.

Crowley sighed when he saw the boom in Aziraphale's hands. "No, I don't need that. It's a gift, angel, note a present trade."

"I know, but I still feel bad just taking your plant."

"But you shouldn't."

Aziraphale sighed and held the book out to him, hoping that maybe Crowley would give in and take it.

"No, Aziraphale, keep your book. I know how much it hurts you to give them away."

"Well, that's just because I trust the customers with ownership of the books less than I trust you."

Crowley was genuinely pleased that Aziraphale thought that of him, but determined not to let it show. He gently pushed down the angles hands. "Dammit, angel. _No gift trade_."

"Will you at least let me loan you a book? I think you might like this one."

The demon was silent for a moment. "_Fine_," he muttered. "But you better believe I'll return it to you very shortly."

"Thank you."

Crowley nodded and tucked the book into his pocket.

"Oh! I, ah, still have your jacket."

"Jacket?"

Aziraphale nodded. "You left your, jacket here after the, er, chair happened."

"Oh, that jacket. Eh, keep it, you could use some dark colors to spruce up your wardrobe."

"I can't just _keep _it. You have to take it back. I even cleaned it for you!" The angel insisted.

"All right, all right, whatever. I'll take the jacket. But seriously, we really need to get you in some darker colors. All this white and cream, it's just so..." Crowley waved his hand at Aziraphale's outfit. "Plain."

"I like my clothes!"

"I'm sure you do."

"You dress in _black _everyday."

Crowley wrinkled his nose. "I wouldn't call it black as much as various shades of very dark grey. Where's my jacket?"

"In the back."

The demon nodded and strolled off the back room. He picked his jacket off the chair it was resting on and inspected it. It _was _cleaned, and looked almost new. Of course it did, it'd be easy for Aziraphale to just miracle away stains. He paused for a moment and brought the jacket to his nose, sniffing it. It smelled faintly of flowers, roses, maybe, or perhaps tulips. Crowley wasn't to keen on identifying the smells of flowers. For all he knew, it could just be dandelions. Do dandelions have a scent? He didn't know. _That's something worth Googling later_, he thought to himself as he pulled on the jacket.

He waved goodbye to Aziraphale, who was haggling with a customer about the price of a small blue book, and smiled to himself as he walked down the street to the Bentley. The price haggling was Aziraphale's last defense against actually selling a book, and it could go on for hours. He had seen it happen. He was rather impressed at that one client's persistence on the lower price, because Aziraphale, he could go on for, well, forever, literally, but that one customer seemed like she could too.

He started the car and began to drive, cutting off at least three people in a rather dangerous lane change and doubling the speed limit, swerving a bit because he wasn't _really _paying attention. Just enough so he wouldn't crash. It really would be unfortunate to get discorporated, especially at this point.

Aziraphale presses his face against the window of the shop in an attempt to track Crowley's progress, assuring himself that the demon would be fine. He always was, wasn't he? He stood in the kitchenette, making himself some tea and a flash of black in the back room caught his eye. He stood next to the small couch and picked up Crowley's jacket. The jacket he had entered the shop with. He had swapped them, taking the clean one and leaving the original.

Aziraphale wondered if he had just forgotten it or if he left it on purpose. Either could be the kind of unpredictable thing Crowley would do. He wondered if he should return this one as well, maybe even wash it as well because he didn't have much to do, especially being done with saving the world for the time being.

He had a feeling that Crowley left the jacket there on purpose though, that maybe he really didn't want the extra one back and maybe he really meant it when he said Aziraphale should wear more dark colors. Aziraphale picked up the jacket, and after debating whether or not to call Crowley, he hung it up on his coat hanger.

As for Crowley, he wasn't wondering or worrying about the jacket he had left behind. He was simply trying to outdrive the police car chasing him down the road as he sang along loudly and a bit off-key to Queen blasting from his car speakers.


End file.
